Innholdsfortegnelse for June/July 2023 i Game & Fish West

With this being the June/July issue, it only seems appropriate to reflect on the freedoms we will celebrate on Independence Day. Thanks to the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, we Americans can include hunting among them. And while we enjoy the freedom to hunt within regulations we as hunters have agreed to in order to conserve game species, it is a freedom—like many others—under attack. Take, for example, hunting black bears with hounds. Anti-hunters have already managed to get the method banned in many states, even though it’s a traditional and highly effective way of managing the species. I was fortunate to go a hound hunt with Table Mountain Outfitters in Idaho last June, and my story on the adventure begins on page 20. It is a story that…

I hiked through crashing surf, heading for one of my favorite casting spots on top of a huge stone monolith the size of a small house. Perched 20 feet above the blue Pacific swells gurgling at its base, I had command of a large piece of open water. Summer on the Pacific Coast is a glorious time and place to fish the biggest fishing hole on the planet. I knotted on a No. 4 Scrounger lead jig head, carefully threading on a white, 8-inch curly-tail worm. This is a deadly combination that brings black rock bass and ling cod up from the depths to strike and hook up in rod-bending battles that will thrill any saltwater angler. The killer instinct of rockfish to devour any swimming bait that has a…

In 1993, I was a 29-year-old Ohioan who, while attending a writers’ conference in Portland, Ore., met a young lady. Julie was a Washington State native and, much to my delight, loved the outdoors. Hunting, fishing, camping, gardening, retrievers, firearms—it was a match made in heaven. The conference quickly become priority No. 2, replaced by exploring the Pacific Northwest with my impromptu guide. During that week, I was introduced to the Columbia River, the Cascades and Mount St. Helens, to name just three adventures. But it was the coast, and Washington’s Long Beach Peninsula, that captivated me the most. Never had I seen a place so full of outdoor opportunity. Today, some 30 years later, my then-guide is now my wife, and has been since 1999. There’s been quite a…

It had taken us all day to find the blacktail buck bedded on the side of a hill rising from Alaska’s Kodiak Island. I was lying prone on an adjacent hill, a light wind quartering from right to left. The range was 284 yards, and my rifle was steady when I squeezed off the shot. The buck took one bound from its bed and rolled down the hill until it stopped on the edge of an alder patch. It never moved again. Thus was my introduction to Remington’s Premier Long Range load, a performance that didn’t really surprise me given the top-end components the company has put in its new line of big-game ammo. Bullets built for long-range hunting have to possess three primary features. First, of course, they must…

The federal Farm Bill, reauthorized by Congress every five years, is the most important piece of legislation that most of us ignore. That’s because the $1.4 trillion bill, which influences everything from public-school lunches to disaster payments for drought-crippled corn farmers, is dense, complicated and so full of acronyms that it’s hard to know whether you should support ACEP, VPA-HIP or EQIP. Happily, folks far more familiar with the process and details are watching the development of the 2023 Farm Bill with an eye for what it can deliver to America’s hunters, anglers and outdoor recreationists. Folks like Jim Ingles, director of governmental affairs for Pheasants Forever. “Depending on what part of the country you live in, or whether you are a farmer or a hunter, you’re going to hear…

During most of the year, catfish are pretty easy to catch if you’re savvy to their ways. This is not so during their summer spawning time, however. As spring begins, catfish respond quickly to anglers’ offerings. Warm spring rains plus longer days raise the water temperature and stimulate feeding activity. Catfish are active, hungry and concentrated in dense schools this season. As spring ends and summer begins, however, catch rates drop because mature catfish become occupied with spawning activities and eat far less. With flathead catfish, this occurs when the water temperature is 66 to 75 degrees. Channel cats and blues spawn at 70 to 74 degrees, with some spawning activities happening in the 80- to 81-degree range in shallower, warm-water lakes. All catfish nest in cavities. Flatheads use hollow…

By 3:30 a.m., Dad and I were where we wanted to be. It was Oct. 1, opening day of general rifle season. I had been scouting the area since early August and had seen some good bucks. We assumed the place would be overrun with hunters, but we didn’t see a single truck until 10 minutes before legal shooting light. Over the next few minutes, we watched more trucks making their way down various logging roads in Oregon’s Cascade Range. Daylight came and the sun eventually crested the mountains behind us. Dad and I had yet to see a deer, but we dared not move. The logged unit we glassed was tall with weeds, willows and briars, making it hard to see deer unless they moved. Finally, more than three…

When school let out for summer, Shane’s cousin Kurt invited him to his family’s dairy farm in New York, with the promise of lots of good fishing after the daily chores were done. Shane quickly talked his parents into letting him go, and a couple weeks later he was in Kurt’s room, organizing his gear in preparation for an afternoon on the water. “I brought Rat-L-Traps, buzzbaits, deep-diving cranks and a whole slew of plastic worms,” said Shane. “I’d probably leave the buzzbaits and those anaconda-sized worms at home,” Kurt suggested, chuckling a little as he looked over Shane’s tackle. “Do you have any eighth-ounce white jigs or Rooster Tails?” “I don’t have anything that small,” said Shane. “I just can’t imagine a bass—even a Northern bass—not devouring a 10-inch…

There are two rules of thumb when it comes to field shooting positions. The first is that the easier the position is to assume, the less steady it will be. The other is that the closer you can get your rifle to the ground, the steadier you will be. Competence from field shooting positions can help you find success while hunting, but competence only comes with practice. Here’s a crash course in the four field shooting positions with some tips to help you assume them faster and shoot better from them. STANDING The standing off-hand position is the fastest to assume and the least steady, but sometimes it’s required when you’re surprised and need to take a fast shot. Most think that to assume it, you just snap the rifle…

When the mud-spattered Toyota stopped at the end of the gravel road, I slid out and strode to the edge of a clearing that had most likely been a log landing in the recent past. The ground dropped off quickly beyond the crushed stone and scattered bark fragments, and below me stretched a vast forest of pine towering above thick, green undergrowth. A soft wind swayed the branches of the trees at the edge of the landing, and I caught my breath when the breeze delivered the faint yet unmistakable sound my ears had been straining to hear. A bark, a bawl … somewhere down in there—way down in there—the hounds were still on the trail. I turned around to get the attention of the guys in the truck and,…

We were supposed to launch the boat at 3:30 p.m., but I was early. Arriving an hour before my dad, who was trailering the boat, I put on polarized glasses and scouted from the bank. A hundred yards upstream of the launch and boat moorage, the reservoir we would be fishing narrows to the original river channel and a back eddy shaded by tall trees. I thought it looked like a good spot to look for the splash of a trout rising for a mayfly. It was only a couple of minutes before one slashed at the surface. When I saw another, I looked closer and could see dark shapes 3 to 6 feet deep in the green water. Earlier in the year, I used pink bubblegum worms to catch…

First, the obvious: It’s hot out there in many places across the region. The sun can really punish an angler bent on fishing between dawn and dusk. It’ll sap your energy, harm your skin (without proper safeguards) and warm the water to the point that fish demand deep shadows or deeper water. It can also bring out water skiers, jet skiers, swimmers and pleasure boaters—all fine people if they would simply stay on the shore. With so much competition for a placid piece of water and so much need for relief from the heat, the obvious answer is to fish at night. It can also be the correct answer. Here are three questions to determine whether nighttime is the right time on your favorite summertime bass lake: First, is the…

I was halfway through a slow, steady retrieve when my line suddenly pulled tight, a noticeable bend forming in my rod. Something in the shallow, clear waters surrounding the Sister Islands had inhaled my black marabou jig. I set the hook and felt a weighty fish dart off in another direction. A short but dogged fight later, I had a chunky smallmouth bass in hand—my first of the day. After a few quick photos, I slid the feisty fish back into the cool water, and my boatmates congratulated me on my first Door County smallmouth. It was mid-June, and our group of anglers was on Lake Michigan’s Green Bay for two reasons: to catch lots of smallmouth bass and to test Humminbird’s new MEGA Live Imaging TargetLock system before its…